Web Survey Bibliography
Survey respondents sometimes interpret the words in survey questions differently than intended by question authors and this can lead to inaccurate answers. One way to clarify the intended meaning is to make definitions available. In Web surveys, it is possible to link words and their definitions so that respondents can click for clarification if they realize they might benefit from doing so and are willing to perform the necessary steps. In this paper we report an experiment in which we varied the familiarity of question terms (e.g. antioxidant vs. beer), the informativeness of the definitions (e.g. vegetables includes French fries vs. beef includes meat from cows) and the number of clicks required to obtain definitions (one, two or more). The experiment was embedded in a survey administered to a sample obtained from Survey Sampling Inc., yielding over 2,500 respondents, randomly assigned to the different conditions. Respondents were asked four questions about their consumption of food and nutrition. Overall, respondents were unlikely to obtain definitions (only about one sixth of respondents obtained one or more definitions) suggesting that many misconceptions go uncorrected. When respondents obtained at least one definition, they did so far more often for unfamiliar than familiar terms, indicating that they rarely recognize mismatched interpretations of words that they believe they know. On those occasions when definitions were obtained for familiar terms, they were more often informative than uninformative suggesting that respondents recognized the mismatch; the pattern was reversed for unfamiliar terms. Finally definitions were more likely to be obtained the fewer the number of required clicks reflecting respondents? willingness to expend truly minimum effort to clarify meaning. We discuss the results in terms of designing interactive Web survey features that are likely to be used, thus reducing measurement error.
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2003
Conferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
Web survey bibliography - The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) 58th Annual Conference, 2003 (20)
- Determining the Probability of Selection for a Telephone Household in a Random Digit Dial Sample Design...; 2003; Triplett, T. A., Abi-Habib, N.
- Validations in Web-based Surveys; 2003; Crawford, S. D., Peytchev, A.
- Use and non-use of clarification features in web surveys; 2003; Tourangeau, R., P., Couper, M. P., Conrad, F. G., Baker, R. P.
- Asking Comparative Questions: A Comparison Of Three Wording Strategies; 2003; Liu, K.
- It's Only Incidental: Effects of Response Format in Determining Behavioral or Event Occurrence; 2003; Lafond, C. R., Smith, M. R., Behnke, C. S., Thomas, R. K.
- Achieving high response rates on web-based surveys of post-secondary students; 2003; Nichols, L. B., Ghadialy, R.
- Design implementation of a Multimode Web Survey; 2003; Wine, S. J., Cominole, M. B., Carwile, D. S., Perry, K.
- Partnering with a Newspaper to Assess Community Opinion Online; 2003; Downs, E. P., Lindley, A. M.
- Implementing a Web Survey Administration System at the GAO; 2003; Feldesman, A. G.
- Using Internet-Based Surveys With Physicians, What Works and What Doesn't Work; 2003; Schneiderman, M., Thran, S., Adams, C., Lerner, B.
- Exploring Online Survey Metodologies: Who are the Respondents and How to Get them to respond; 2003; Wolter-Warmerdam, K., Gardinali, A. P., Wong, R.
- Using RGI (Respondent Generated Interval) to gather factual information in a web survey; 2003; Lusinchi, D.
- Can What We Don’t Know (about “Don’t Know”) Hurt Us?: Effects of Item Non-response...; 2003; Krosnick, J. A., Behnke, C. S., Lafond, C. R., Thomas, R. K.
- What They See Is What We Get: Response Options for Web Surveys; 2003; Couper, M. P., Tourangeau, R., Conrad, F. G., Crawford, S. D.
- Web Survey Design: Comparing Static and Interactive Survey Instruments; 2003; Nyiri, Z., Clark, L. R.
- Comparing Web-Based Survey Methods with other Approaches: An examination of health knowledge, opinion...; 2003; Greiling, K. A., McCarrier, P. K., Stringer, M. C.
- The role of issue involvement in UK public attitudes to the single European currency; 2003; Roberts, E. C.
- Partipation in Online Surveys: Results from a Series of Experiments; 2003; Kiniorski, A. K., R.Smith, M. R.
- Does Order Really Make a Difference? The Impact of Respondent and Question Characteristics on Response...; 2003; O'Neill, G.
- Cognitive processes in Web Surveys; 2002; Fuchs, M.